This nation of over 400 thousand square kilometers, several times longer north to south than east to west, shares the Scandanavian Peninsula with Norway(2). Along its neighbor's border, mountains rise above 2,000 meters. Most of the country is low plateau, sloping toward the Baltic Sea. One exception is the lowland that stretches from Sweden's eastward bulge that is just north of the capital, and extends west southwest to the Skagerrak. This band includes Lake Vänern; Vättern, a second large lake that starts in it and points southward; and two lakes (or lake systems) nearer the capital, Hjälmaren and Malaren. The very tip of the peninsula is also low.
Sweden includes two large islands, Öland and Gotland, and many fringing islands.
Its chief rivers(3) are:
| Name | Empties into | Important Associated | Important tributaries |
| Lakes or lake systems | or headwaters | ||
| Torne | Bothnian Bay | Torne-träsk | Muonio |
| Lule | Bothnian Bay | ||
| Skelefte | Bothnian Bay | Hornavan | |
| Ume | Gulf of Bothnia | ||
| Ångerman | Gulf of Bothnia | ||
| Ljungan | Gulf of Bothnia | ||
| Ljusnan | Gulf of Bothnia | ||
| Dal | Gulf of Bothnia | ||
| Baltic Sea | Malaren, Hjälmaren | ||
| Göta Canal (Kanal) | Baltic Sea | Vänern, Vättern | |
| Göta | Kattegat | Vänern | Klar |
At least 17 in 20 speak Swedish. The rest speak a miscellany of languages.
More than 19 in 20 are Christian, nearly all of them Evangelical Lutherans.
There are two metropolitan areas of over a million her, but one of them, København-Malmo, is centered across the Øresund on Sjælland Island, Denmark(4). The other is the capital, Stockholm. This city extends across islands and peninsulas that surround the channels connecting Lake Malaren to an inlet of the Baltic; its watery setting gives it its nickname, "Venice of the North." Its architecture includes an 18th century palace, a 17th century German church and the national museum.
Indo-European dialects may have arrived in southern Norway by 2000 B.C.E. It is more probable that Germanic dialects were spoken there in the last few centuries B.C.E. These Northern Germanic dialects evolved into Old Norse and the eastern Old Norse dialects into Swedish and Danish.
By 1500 B.C.E., speakers of a language ancestral to Sami, Finnish and Estonian had settled along the southern Baltic shores.(5) Over the next 2,000 years they spread northward. Sami became distinct, probably under the influence of the assimulated previous inhabitants, as well as by Old Norse and distance.
The East Old Norse spread to Finland, where Swedish remains important, and to parts of Russia and England, where it faded.
Conversion of Swedes to Christianity occurred between the ninth and 12th centuries. Lutheranism was introduced by Danes and made the state religion in the mid-16th century.
The former religion of the Sami
west and north
northeast
east and southeast
west of Skåne
west of Halland
west of Göteborg
(1) Sverige in Swedish
(2) Norge in Norwegian.
(3) Many are called älv or älven.
(4) Danmark in Danish.
(5) Some of what is now southern Sweden was submerged this long ago.